An Evening Drive Down Hush Mesa

In the Southwest, there are few indicators of autumn. There are no leaves turning crunchy gold, there are no no early freezes. But, what we do get, is the light. When that light hits the horizon in the way where it grows like a witchling trance, the golden honey-thick light in the noon-times and evenings misting over the roads, that is when we know it is truly the fall-time in this place.

I think about it a lot as I go down our city's roads main roads on my sad little scooter, held together with zip-ties and epoxy. Our city is small, though large enough to hide things, so we have few highways, and few of anything, except for the college and the general air of quiet madness.

A while back, some men came to our city to try and set up a drilling operation, for "oil" they said, from a place called Ajax they said. Our officials nodded, signed the proper forms, shook hands, our city could use the money they said. Even when they saw them taking off a fleshy thing like a mask behind bathroom stalls. Even when they had the nightmares and saw the marks on their hands. Even when the head executive's "gloves" fell off during a press conference revealing something that nobody thought for a moment was an actual hand. The city could use the money, they said.

I remember seeing the machines being hauled up the mountain highways, with the great red Ajax logos painted on their sides, acid-smelling as they revved up. They looked like needle-headed men; sitting on steel thrones, or like rusty pump horses with too many legs, or jellyfish made of hooks and wires and pistons, or things that hurt my eyes to look at. But boy, they didn't seem to be taking any actual oil, if the red stuff that people chatted about seeing in the leaky barrels hauled from the site was any indication. Nobody in town ever actually seemed to get a job from there.

But I didn't let that get me down. After all, it was the eventide of fall, and my thoughts wandered as I traveled towards home. I was more annoyed by the traffic stopping in the middle of the intersection. Until I saw the shadows.

And then, there they were, the Ones from the Hills. From beyond the times of suited men and metal things. From below their drills and iron pumps, they came. No, that's not true. They were always here; before the others.

Like great green nail-pointed Haniwa-figures they walked amongst us; earth and water dripping from their wrinkled skins. In their hands, as they crossed the gleaming asphalt, they shambled, dripping with red oil and pieces of Ajax metal, pump-horse hooves and drill-men hands held as trophies, the rest carried on their back like trash to take down to the lower berth, that none but them know where.

Upon their hands and feet they were stained slate-grey, from the ones that called themselves men, their suits tangled in their thorns. The sounds of electronic screaming echoed from the hills, and a pillar of red smoke billowed up on the horizon only to fade.. Some people wept, some people cheered, some people just smiled.

For, it was in the golden light of autumn, where things that have slept walk, where a land that bleeds is a land that remembers, and pain will come on those who has soiled the earth where The Ones From The Hills watch.